


Danger, Danger!

by owlaholic68



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 2
Genre: Drug Use, Electrocution, Endgame, Gen, Mild Language, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-24 14:57:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14357844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlaholic68/pseuds/owlaholic68
Summary: Leonard’s never been good at puzzles. And this is no dinky jigsaw puzzle, this a deadly trap that’s going to kill him, and he’s never going to finish his quest, he’s going to fail and he’s going to die in here-





	Danger, Danger!

This is the worst day of Leonard’s entire fucking life. This is the most miserable five minutes he’s ever experienced, and he’s been through some rough times this last year out of Arroyo.

But this. This is far worse than anything he could ever imagine. He’s going to _die_ in here.

He’s huddled against a wall right outside the second safe room he’s found, his helmet on the floor. It’s not electrified here, a small mercy, a minute-long reprieve. He runs his shaking hands through his hair, his heavy breathing loud in his ears, his chest burning with every breath. He’s more than halfway through now, he just has to keep going. Hopefully. Hopefully he’s not back at the beginning.

Perseverance has never seemed so impossible. Leonard sobs, his head in his hands. He’s come so _far_ , he’s gone through so much to get here. And he gets here, he finds his people, and he’s stopped by a bunch of wires lighting up a floor.

He’s stopped by a silly little thing called electrocution.

Slowly, painfully, he gets to his feet, leaning heavily on the wall. His fingers tingle. The hallway spins before him, the doorway blurring just a few feet in front of him, just a few more feet and he’ll be back in that twisted labyrinth. But first, Stimpacks. One in his arm in the crack between armor pieces, one in his neck to try and do something about his fuzzy head. He’s got plenty. But the problem is going to be the toll it’ll take on his body. Stimpacks aren’t really supposed to be used so frequently, and not for such drastic internal injuries.

He’ll deal with that later. For now, he needs to keep going. He hasn’t gotten this far by giving up.

His helmet goes back on. It’s not going to do much, but he doesn’t want to accidentally leave it behind. He’s still got his weapons, his supplies, the GECK, a handmade Gecko tooth necklace that Hakunin gave him for his eighteenth birthday, a battered set of lockpicks-

Lockpicks. Maybe he could cut right to the chase, cut through all of this bullshit and just get out of here. He’s going to try the door just to his left. It’s been difficult, trying to keep track of exactly where in this sprawling maze he is, but he doesn’t think he’s ever gone through that door. It’s a start.

Boots of his power armor on the floor. One second, one step. Three seconds, he’s at the door and hastily removing a small panel next to the doorframe, his armored hands slipping on the smooth metal surface. Seven seconds, eight, and he’s faced with some kind of mechanism to disarm the field around the door.

Ten seconds, and the expected shock comes. His legs spasm. He reaches in and yanks on some wires. He’s got no other plan, he doesn’t really know how to disarm this kind of thing. He hadn’t expected the Enclave to think this far ahead.

He’s on the ground before he realizes what’s happened, before he fully feels the electricity coursing through his body. His teeth grind against each other, his jaw clenched shut, too tight to scream.

How many seconds? How many seconds until the next shock? He struggles to a crawling position, his body too numb to muster the effort to rise to his feet, his armor heavy and weighing him down. It had done nothing to shield his burning body from that last shock. He feels even worse than before he had used those two Stimpacks.

Then he feels even worse than _that._ Ten seconds must have elapsed, because his whole body jerks as a shock from the floor hits him, his elbows wobbling.

Three, four, five seconds. Six, seven, then he’s safely back in the hallway. Back where he started just a minute ago, and in even worse condition.He can’t take time to wallow in his hopelessness. His hands scrabble for a never-used compartment in his bag, one that he’s always kept close at hand, but whose contents he’d never dared consume. They were too precious, too rare, always saved for a worse injury or a more dangerous fight, or sometime when he would need them more.

Well, this was that moment.

The Super Stimpack stings. Leonard leaves it attached to his upper arm and fights dizziness to stand. One little setback won’t be able to stop him. He coughs, blood heavy on his tongue. He takes his helmet off, briefly, to spit out some blood onto the floor. He’s pretty sure his lungs aren’t supposed to feel this heavy. That one Super Stimpack isn’t going to be enough. Already, he feels the hopelessness of his task start to overwhelm him again. He rummages in his bag again. This is the end of the road, he might as well use everything he’s got.

Buffout, the small green tablets bitter on his tongue. Mentats, sweet and slightly tangy. His vision clears and his legs stabilize. No Jet: too addictive, not useful enough. He holds his breath and grimaces as he injects a dose of Psycho, dreading the side effects that are going to strike him down in a few hours. He just needs to get through the next five minutes. He just needs to get out of here. He can deal with the consequences later. He’s got mere minutes before the soothing high of the Super Stimpack wears off. He needs to move, and now. Quickly.

Three seconds, he hits a console. Some doors open, some doors close. Eight seconds, he makes it to another console and hits that button too. Ten seconds, and he grimaces through the pain.

Six seconds, and he’s at another, hitting the correct console button. He’s getting too slow, his energy starting to flag again. He shoves another Stimpack into his leg. He needs to keep going. He just needs to get out of here-

Ten seconds again, and his hand spasms, hitting the button again, repeating the sequence of doors. He sprints in a random direction, through a random doorway. Almost all of the doors are opened now, all he has to do is find one room he doesn’t think he’s been in before, he’s so close-

Ten seconds again, and he’s forgotten to count the seconds, the shock hitting him harder than he thought possible, considering that he’s been a walking conduit for the last ten minutes. He loses his balance mid-step, his right leg wobbling then buckling under him.

Two Super Stimpacks at the same time is a _really_ bad idea. That doesn’t stop him from doing it anyways.

Six seconds, he gets up and slams his hand down on a console that’s lit from behind by sparks, a few loose wires on the ground behind it. A door opens. Leonard drags himself to his feet, bracing himself as nine seconds ticks over to ten, his eyes squeezed shut for just a second before they open again.

He needs to get out of here.

Leonard would have cried with relief, had he not already been sobbing from the pain. The door he’d opened had been the final one. He stumbles into a dark hallway, another somber doorway opening before him, then closing behind him. There’s a staircase in front of him and it leads up and away and out of here, and he’s _out of here-_

The GECK is in his hands. He’s one step closer to finishing his quest. Whatever he’s going to face on the rest of this hellish monstrosity of a secret base, it’s not going to be worse than this.

Nothing could ever be worse than this.

**Author's Note:**

> *sees Leonard actually make it out* God I wish that were me. I'm actually stuck at the exact point that I started him at, and I just keep on running through all the rooms and hitting things at random, then ending up back at the beginning somehow. I'm trying not to use a guide, but I might have to, because I've used about 15 Stimpacks so far to stay alive. 
> 
> You get 20-40 points of damage (about 5-15 if you're wearing armor, I think) every ten seconds in the maze. But if you try to disarm the trap and pick the door, if you fail the disarm check (which has a -40 modifier, and I don't even think Leonard's Traps skill is above 40), you get 20-40 points of ARMOR-PIERCING damage, which is doubled with a critical fail.   
> I don't even think I ever take that much damage against Frank Horrigan at the end, nor do I take so much time killing him. This really is the hardest part of the entire game for me.


End file.
